


Coming to Terms

by Toolfish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 10:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toolfish/pseuds/Toolfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A humanstuck that focuses around Karkat and his relationship with his friends and parents, and also the relationships among his friends, over one summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming to Terms

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, okay, so this will be my first official fan fiction with multiple chapters. Hopefully it goes well. I'm definitely not the best at catching all my errors, so if you see any mistakes in grammar or spelling, please tell me.

Nepeta holds the wheel tightly, eyes locked on the road, and she constantly opens her mouth to speak to you, but closes it upon better judgment. It isn’t until a good hour of driving later that she speaks up. “Why don’t you just apawlogize and ask them to take you back?” She puts emphasis on the cat pun, and you’re so used to it that it’s almost comforting.

You shift uncomfortably in the seat next to her while you think of how to answer her question. It’s something you’ve asked yourself over and over since your parents kicked you out earlier. Apologizing is what you have done every time earlier when you got into a fight with them, but it’s different this time. They insulted you for your sexuality, and that was something you weren’t just about to accept; your pride wouldn’t allow it. She shoots you an expectant look as you ponder your answer.

“Nepeta, look, I just can’t this time. This was the last straw, and I’m sorry I made you lie to my—our—parents. If it were my choice, Gamzee would be driving me, but you know how he’s always so high off his ass he should’ve left the atmosphere already.” You pause to look out the truck window on your right before talking again. “Besides, this is good, right? You won’t have to hear Dad yelling his head off at me for the most recent bullshit I’ve pulled around town. I’ll make this all up to you some day, I swear.”

“Karkitty,” she sighs; the pity in her voice makes you cringe in shame. “What are you even going to do? You’re barely out of high school, and you have next to no money. Who is going to hire you?” She takes a hand off the wheel to brush back some of her messy, red hair before squeaking as she remembers the “both hands on the wheel at all times” rule and returns it to the wheel a bit shakily. You honestly don’t know how she ever got calm enough to pass her driver’s test.

“I don’t know grocery store? It’s summer, there’s bound to be some place looking for teen workers to hire. I don’t care how shitty the job is as long as I get paid.” And it’s true. You’ll even be a patty flipper, if it means you get money. “And I can just stay with Sollux while I work. Everything will be fine.” When she still looks concerned despite your assuring, you decide to ease her mind with a deal. “Look, you can message or call me at the end of the summer, and if my life is complete shit, I’ll apologize to Mom and Dad and come home. That doesn’t mean you stay in the house the whole time just waiting for me to come back home. Have fun, roleplay with your boyfriend. You still do that, right?”

Her face is flushed when she yells shrilly at you, “He isn’t my boyfuriend! But, yes, we do still roleplay, when his legs aren’t giving him trouble. Okay, do you purrmise to come back as soon as it starts getting too hard? And, by purrmise, I mean promise, just so you know I’m serious.”

“Yes, I promise.”

She nibbles on her bottom lip nervously for a few moments before shaking her head. “Fine, let’s keep going then. Does Sollux know you’re coming?”

“Not exactly, no.”

The first thing you notice when Sollux opens the door is the chatter in the background. Since when did Sollux have friends that aren’t you? When you see the confusion clear on his face, you nearly turn tail and call Nepeta to turn around, but you know you can’t give up before even talking to him. “Sollux,” you say, attempting to get him to talk.

“Karkat! Kay-Kay, shit. What are you doing here? I thought you moved, like, years ago.” You notice how he still has the same glasses that he got freshman year, and you would bet he’s also the same height he was as a freshman. Surprisingly, you’re about the same height as him, if only a quarter of an inch shorter.

“And I thought you had a lisp the last time I saw you, but you’re still the same douche that you always were. Can I come in?”

“I guess,” he sighs dramatically, as if your very presence pains him. It shows that you two still have the same friend-enemy relationship that you have, back when you used to live here, and you’re glad that at least that hasn’t changed. “My girlfriend and her friend are over though, so be careful; they might bite.”

“And I’ll gladly bite back.” You push past him through the doorway, and you know he’s staring at your suitcase.

The two people he mentioned are seated on the couch, and you’re surprised to see that the friend of the girlfriend is a guy. The girl is decked out in some colorful outfit that hurts your eyes and loads of golden jewelry, including a tiara with a pink jewel that matches her glasses. The thing that stands out about the guy is the purple streak through his gelled up black hair. The second thing that catches your eye is how loudly his outfit positively screams “hipster!” Neither of them even acknowledges you; they’re too deep in their heated conversation.

“But it’s about a whale, and a whale is a mammal, not a fish,” the girl says.

“It’s still an ocean flick, so it counts,” the boy responds.

“No, it does not!”

“Totally does.”

“Not.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t mind them,” Sollux tells you. When you still stare at them with mixed feelings of half-confusion, half-interest, he explains more to you. “They were seeing who knows the most fish movies. Eridan, that’s the asshole with the weird pants, named off the Free Willy movies, and Feferi, my girlfriend, called bullshit. Now they won’t stop arguing about it.”

“We aren’t arguing; we are discussing. And we will stop discussing when he accepts that I’m right,” Feferi says without even looking at you.

“You mean when you give in and accept I’m right,” Eridan chimes in.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Nope.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that-“

“Sollux, can I please use your computer to dispute this discussion and prove this stupid barnacle head wrong?” She turns to look in your direction, but still seems to refuse to acknowledge you. Eridan, however, stares at you with vague interest. Before you can say anything to him, Sollux is leading you by the shoulder to his kitchen.

“Fuck no, babe. You’d probably blow it up. And anyway, my friend, Kay-Kay, and I need to use it,” he tells her as they leave.

“Liar!” she calls as you leave into the kitchen.

You choose a seat at the small, wooden kitchen table, setting your suitcase next to your chair, and Sollux pours himself some coffe. He ignores you when you tell him that you don’t want any, and he pours some into a mug for you anyway.

“So, why have I been graced with the presence of the infamous Karkat Vantas?” he asks when he seats himself across the table from you.

Before you can answer, the boy, Eridan, interrupts the conversation. “Sol, we really fuckin’ need your computer. This is a serious discussion and I have to prove Fef wrong. Now hand over the laptop, you ass.” When you turn to look at him, he’s leaning against the doorway, bejeweled fingers tapping impatiently.

“If I said no to Eff-Eff, what makes you think I would just go ‘oh, sure’ to you, fishface?” Sollux asks him, voice dripping with sarcasm and snark. You don’t know why, but you almost stand up for the guy, when he’s called fishface. His face isn’t that bad; in fact, it’s kind of nice.

“Hey, you, whatever your name is,” he addresses you.

“My name is Karkat.”

And, just like that, he’s given you a nickname. “Kar, I seem like a nice guy, right? Don’t you think I deserve at least to be able to look just this one little thin’ up?”

“Oh, please, Kay-Kay would never-“

“Dude, just let him use the fucking computer,” you say before you even realize what’s coming out of your mouth.

“Kay-Kay!” Sollux yells and looks at you as if you’re crazy for choosing Eridan’s side.

“Fuck yes. Even Kar, who hasn’t ever met me, knows that I should be allowed to use the computer. That’s proves you gotta gimme it.”

“God, fine, I’ll give it to you once we’re done talking. I still can’t believe you chose his side,” he grumbles. “So, why are you here?”

“The parents finally kicked me out,” you state bluntly.

Understanding washes over Sollux’s face as soon as you say it, and you don’t even have to tell him you need to stay here. He already knows what you’re here for.

"Dude, you know how hard it is with just me and my dad. Don’t tell Feferi I said this, ‘cause her mom is his boss and all, but his boss is a total bitch. He should’ve gotten a promotion months ago. Plus, I’m not exactly raking in the cash as tech help.”

“I can get a job taking orders from obese people or bagging groceries to pay rent or some shit,” you tell him, attempting to not sound desperate.

“Why don’t you just-“

“Apologize? Yeah, that’s what Nepeta recommended, too. I’m not going to do that.”

Sollux shakes his head. “I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to ask, why don’t you just stay with Gamzee, the so-called ‘new best friend’ of yours?”

“Well, I don’t especially prefer staying with a drug addict, and especially not when I can’t even name all the fucking drugs that guy is on, or how he manages to keep a job with morphine shot up his veins every day and clown voodoo makeup all over his face, but he does it. And his dad is never home, so he pretty much pays for all his food, though that isn’t much considering how little he eats. But I just couldn’t do that to him, okay.” All this begins to make your intestines twist into knots with guilt, and you can’t bring yourself to look up from the coffee that swirls around in your mug.

“I don’t know dude, it’s hard enough as it is here.” He trails off and sighs.

“He can stay with me.”

Once again, you’re turning around to look at Eridan, and you realize that he never left the doorway; he’d been here the entire time. This “fishface”, this hipster, that you don’t know, is offering to take you in, when your own friend has just about turned you down completely. You don’t know why Sollux seems to hate him so much, and you’re pretty sure that you’ll never understand why either.

“Have you been eavesdropping this whole time?” Sollux growls sounding personally insulted at this.

But Eridan doesn’t mind him. “Whaddya say, Kar? I can take you in under my win’; save you from a life of homelessness,” he offers.

“Shit, dude. Yeah, yes, of course. Thank you so fucking much. I mean damn, I don’t know you, Just, yes, oh my God,” you sputter out before actually getting up to shake his hand and say another multitude of yes’s and thank you’s

When you turn back around, Sollux is shooting daggers at you from behind his taped-up glasses. If looks could kill, you would have keeled over dead already, not that you can bring yourself to care about his opinion on your choice. You finally got yourself a place to stay, and that’s a fucking good accomplishment, by your standards.

You end up spending a few more hours at Sollux’s house discussing movies and playing video games ‘til it’s dark out. Erida and Sollux are constantly at each other’s necks, but since Feferi doesn’t do much about it asides from laughing at them, you assume it perfectly normal behavior. You don’t know how many times you end up sandwiched between Feferi and Eridan, and you’re awed by how natural it feels to have both of them pressed up on either side of you telling you how badly you’re going to lose this Mario Kart race. So, when Sollux drives the lot of you home and you end up squished against Eridan in the backseat of the rusted pickup, you don’t complain and simply listen to their chatter and occasionally nod in agreement.

They complain about parents, weather, friends, and everything in between so casually; it makes you realize how much social activity you’ve missed as a shut-in, and it almost makes you feel like a freak. Asides from the occasional “doucheass hipster” comment directed towards Eridan, they all seem close enough that you could easily assume them all relatives or childhood friends.

Eridan and you are first to be dropped off. Sollux tells you this when you start going through the part of town you remember being described as the “rich side.” You had suspected them to both have money from their jewelry, but not like this. It isn’t until you come to the tall gate in front of a large mansion—his large mansion—that it hits you. This is where you get to be staying all summer. Hot damn.

He rolls his window down and reaches out to press in the password to go through the gate on a keypad with brightly lit numbers that dim once he is finished.

“Drive, Bitterman,” Eridan mock commands once he’s rolled the window back up.

The command is greeted with many grumbled complains from Sollux, but he doesn’t refuse. Soon enough, you’ve pulled up to the front of the house (mansion), and Eridan is telling you to hurry out as soon as he’s opened his door and slid out.

"I can't believe you fucking live here, it looks like some house that shouldn't even be allowed to exist, 'cause it's so damn huge. Seriously, did the Egyptians have to help build this, or did you have aliens do it for you? I don't even understand how it's managing to keep standing," you ramble on the way in. 

He watches you a bit curiously with his lips quirked up, not bothering to say a word, simply listening. As soon as you enter the home, you can't stop yourself from staring up in awe at the dimly lit crystal chandelier above. The golden light emitted from the chandelier seems to make the white walls and carpet glow, and, for the first time in your life, you're actually interested in interior design. Before you can look at anything else, though, Eridan is already dragging you up the staircase in front of you to the left.

"Nice, huh? Dad is all about makin' the house look nice as possible for guests and shit, so try not to spill anythin' while you're here," he informs you. 

"Does your dad even know I'm staying here?"

"Nope. But I'll tell him soon." And with that, he's opened a door and pushed you into his room. It's quaint compared to many of the other rooms you passed, but it's definitely better than yours back at home. A large television is set up in the corner near the computer desk, and a bunk bed is shoved up against the wall. 

"The bed is for when Fef stays the night, but we share it now, I guess. You top bunk is mine, though. So, start unpackin' and I'll go see what Dad has to say about this," he says before leaving and shutting the door behind him. 

You leave your clothing in the suit case, put your laptop on the bed, and set your books in a neat pile on the nightstand nearby. The fight between Eridan and his father downstairs is muffled for the most part, but ignoring it is still difficult to try. Thankfully, you can't make out most of the words, but this also makes you slightly anxious. 

It's about half an hour later, when he returns to the room. 

"You get to stay!"


End file.
